Discussion (365) ¬

Joyce sometimes your forced to make a choice and don’t always have all the right information, I’ve heard that sometimes beneficial bills will be failed because someone slipped something in there for personal benefits and the only way to stop them is to block the bill. (this is a second hand retelling so I can’t guarantee this is true to any extent – but do you really think people wouldn’t try something like that.)

Considering that various previously established information means that Robin is queer, I find it more tragic. The fact that she would vote for that shows a level of self-denial (at best) or self-loathing (at worst) that is… really sad.

robin wasn’t ‘straight with an exception,’ she kind of passed herself off as such before, but ultimately admitted later in the comic that she was ‘definitely not straight,’ and has experienced romantic + sexual attraction to girls on more than one occasion (amber, when talking to leslie about their first female crushes iirc, was the person robin was thinking abt – she lied saying she was into wonder woman, tho, iirc)… & if sexuality carries over, robin is still definitely not straight, but may be oblivious or repressing those feelings.

No, she’s really not. She’s bi and was afraid to admit it. Leslie was not the only or even first woman she exhibited an attraction to. That “straight with an exception” self-description evolved as she came to terms with her sexuality. Her last (I think) self-description was something like “kinda indefinably queer”.

That’s Walkyverse Robin, but her sexuality should be the same in the Dumbiverse.

I mean, didn’t she just explain that she follows the male will in her party as a defense mechanism? She also seems not to actually know much about governing… Maybe she’s playing the role of a puppet? Signed the bill, maybe knowing it likely wouldn’t pass (maybe not), so they wouldn’t “try to destroy” her?

Here in Ireland the fundies have two pet gay men who love to talk about how they are voting against their own interests constantly. I’d feel bad for them if they weren’t so utterly hateful that they are household names for starting every opinion with “as a gay man” and ending it with some horrific repressive bullshit and otherwise being indistinguishable from any other alt-right types. They’re basically Milo, except old and Irish.

I’m thinking of her comments from yesterday’s strip where she treated the “cool girl” trap as just what you have to do to get by as a woman as well as the fact that in this universe, her party’s president-elect ran on a campaign of treating everyone of her race as a rapist trying to destroy America.

Robin has internalized political self-loathing and convinced herself that that is just what one “has” to do. That it is inevitable.

Just looked it up despite being a staunch opponent of racial integration Howard W. Smith had ties to the National Woman’s Party and even supported the Equal Rights Amendment for something like 20 years, but this version only covered gender.

In short his record suggests he did it so if it passed white women wouldn’t have less rights than black people. Horribly racist, but did seem to genuinely care about women’s rights if they shared his skin colour.

Yea, it happens all the time with proposed bills, I think it is one of the major problems with the current US political system. I think the laws should be changed so that amendments have to be related to the bill in question. Would stop a lot of this stupidity.

Uh what? “No way to justify that”? Did or didn’t Trump just get elected by, uh, a respective majority governing the election of a majority of electors (which is not a majority of voters but not all that far off). A lot of people obviously can justify a whole lot. You are not living in liberal fairy land where merely being any kind of human endows you with inalienable rights. If you want that, emigrate. But do it fast, since hating on people other than your folks is quickly becoming all the rage again everywhere after a bit of hiatus caused by WWII being pretty unpopular all in all.

I’m pretty sure that Fart Captor meant that there’s no moral way to justify it.

Like, yeah, folks will obfuscate and throw endless chaff in front of actually acknowledging the consequences of their actions. See all the shitty white folk right now wanting everyone to stop pointing out the direct effect popular white supremacy had on the election results.

Like, I’m sure Robin has her knots she’s tied herself into to justify voting for a nasty hate-filled law simply for a momentary political advantage, but those aren’t good justifications, those aren’t moral justifications.

They are instead the desperate excuses of a kid who’s done something wrong and doesn’t want to get in trouble for it.

They are instead the desperate excuses of a kid who’s done something wrong and doesn’t want to get in trouble for it.
What else do you need justifications for? Good and moral things are not in need of justification.

True, I suppose, except due to the political situation of my country, I have spent all my life having to justify my right to exist, which I neither think is wrong nor something that should get me in trouble… though it certainly does in practice.

That’s not a moral justification. That’s a cowardly attempt to deny one’s personal connection to bigotry. Everyone has a moral choice and if you run on a platform of beat the gays and then enact anti-gay laws, because oh, that’s what you ran for or the party you ran with, then that’s on you.

All the attempt by bigots to pretend their actions aren’t real. Don’t affect real people. Doesn’t say something about their morality and moral code?

It’s bullshit. Sorry Robin and everyone who is like Robin, but no one forced you to vote for a bill stripping the rights of queer folks. This isn’t like a public defender lawyer thing where you have to defend who you get assigned to defend. This is real fucking life. And real fucking actions that have real fucking consequences.

The declaration of independence is paper (and hilariously hypocritical ones at that). The /constitution/ is paper, though the latter at least carries legal force. The reality of the situation is not the pretty words that are on paper.

Interestingly, this is true in spite of the west coast effect, where the polls in some east coast states will close before people really get a chance to vote in the west coast (the polls might be open, but…)

You lack imagination. I can think at least four ways of justifying the vote. A deontological libertarian argument “It’s wrong to discriminate, but it’s also wrong to force others not to discriminate”, a consequentialistic argument about how if bosses are afraid to fire a gay person because they’ll be afraid they’ll be accused of firing them because of the gayness and end up not hiring them in the first place, an argument against state power by arguing that court cases regarding discrimination would cause the court to need to dig through personal conversations and past history, and an economic argument that companies that discriminate lose the benefits of good employees, and such benefits are gained by companies that wouldn’t, kinda like America benefitted from accepting Jewish refugees from Europe.

The arguments in defense aren’t very good or sufficient, but they can exist, if Willis wants Robin to have a defense.

Point one: I mean, deontological libertarianism is also opposed to laws existing, like, at all (since literally every law is “forcing” someone either to do or not do something), so it seems kind of strange to try to use their positions to talk about the morality of a given law, when all laws are equally evil.

And yes, Ayn Rand would disagree, but Rand’s philosophy is incoherent for a reason.

Points two through four: even if these arguments had any merit at all, what merit they could be argued to have is severely undercut by the fact that identical protections already exist on the basis of gender, race, and religion. These arguments were all brought forth and considered insufficient reason not to legislate protections for gender, race, and religion, so now you have to try to demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ identities are somehow different enough to reconsider them.

Point of order: that comparison to people fleeing the Holocaust is really… odd and uncomfortable. America’s immigration policy during WWII was incredibly shameful, and we hardly welcomed Jewish refugees with open arms, but “companies that discriminate lose the benefits of good employees, and companies that do benefit” is a just… I don’t even understand what that was supposed to mean wrt Jewish refugees.

I’m certainly not saying the arguments are good. But there’s no need to use the word ‘indefensible’ if one just means ‘wrong’. Robin’s vote was *wrong*, the arguments in its favour are very weak at best — but it wasn’t indefensible.

Here’s yet another argument that could have been used by Robin — the idea that elected representative are actually there to promote their constituencies’s positions, so that if the constituency is bigoted, then by golly the representative is morally obliged to vote in favour of bigoted laws, whether they personally believe in them or not.

Again not an argument I’d make, not an argument I believe in, but an argument that someone could speak.

which is absolutely NOT enshrined either by USAian laws or by any justifiable system of morality. The entire reason why the Bill of Rights exists is in an attempt (however historically ineffective) to prevent a bigoted constituency from resulting in bigoted laws.

It also feels like you’re (accidentally?) misinterpreting the use of “unjustifiable” / “indefensible” by other people in this thread.

Because there’s the technical meaning (“literally cannot be defended in any way”), but there’s also the more lay definition (“not able to be thought of as good or acceptable”). Heck, even the technical meaning has an implication: “incapable of being maintained as right or valid”.

In this thread, people aren’t saying that NO defense can be mounted; they’re saying no LONG-TERM defense can be mounted. You yourself acknowledge that the defenses you’ve offered are weak; to say “this action is morally-justified” is to say not merely that justifications can be made, but that those justifications will hold up under scrutiny.

Thank you for the article. It’s a good reminder to have. And I would like to add to those numbers if it helps: they’re statistics about the election. Hillary Clinton got 25.6% of all eligible voters’ votes. Donald Trump got 25.5%. Gary Johnson got 1.7%. 46.9% of voters did not vote. Why they didn’t vote could be from a myriad of reasons. Maybe they were sick of election. Maybe they didn’t actually know it was Election Day (I have actually met a few of those people). But also the timing of elections is horrible. Election Day is a Teusday. This means that for many people they have to take time off of work if they want to go vote, and voting often has multiple hours long lines. Some people simply cannot afford to take the time off because they need the money, or could lose their job for not showing up, which of course really hits the working class hard. To make matters worse, states that do early voting by mail don’t count those ballots until after the votes cast on Election Day, which means often not until the election has already been called. So remembering what it says in that article, not even a quarter of the nation really believes in the hatred that has been dripping throughout the election. I hope that helps in some way.

It is, but Rukduk’s got the right of it. A staggeringly large number of people in this country either can’t vote or don’t care to. And that’s every election, every time since they started counting. It’s why “charging the base” can be so important: if you have more enthusiasm and your opponent doesn’t, that can make all the difference since your people actually show up.

However, the swing states that Trump captured also had voter id “checks”. It could be correlation – but at least one of those states had 300,000 possible voters suppressed and the swing was approx 27,000.

So, I’m a middle-aged straight white guy, American citizen by birth, homeowner, on good terms with my family, living within twenty miles of where I was born – in my father’s childhood home, in fact – in one of the bluest states in the Union. This is pretty much ideal for ID requirements, right?

I recently had to renew my driver’s license for the first time under Vermont’s “Federal RealID-compliant” regulations. In order to get a license that I could use as ID (not even the enhanced license that would allow me to get back into the country if I cross the Canadian border; just something that legally qualifies as photo ID), I had to show my birth certificate (original, not a copy), Social Security card (original, not a copy), and supply proof of residency.

The last was a problem for me, because I don’t get mail at my house (nowhere to put a mailbox where they’ll deliver to it, so I just have a post office box), and my utility bills don’t list the service address. The first was almost a problem for me, because it turned out that I didn’t actually have the original of my birth certificate. Fortunately, my parents are back in-state now, and Mom knew where it was, and Dad was able to get it over to me before the DMV closed. (It’s in my safe now.)

And I’m pretty much in the ideal situation as far as such things go. For a lot of marginalized citizens, poor people, people without permanent addresses, people without family support, people who’ve just fallen through the cracks of the bureaucracy, any or all of these can be serious, even insurmountable, obstacles. Becky is fictional, but her situation isn’t all that unusual in the real world. She could not get ID in Vermont.

Oh, and, surprise, those people tend to vote Democratic. When they’re allowed to vote.

Vermont doesn’t require ID for voting, and won’t of our own volition, because we have no interest in suppressing Democratic votes. That doesn’t protect us from Federal requirements being imposed on us by a Federal legislature, executive, and judicial that have no interest in ever again allowing a fair election to be held.

What voter fraud DOES happen comes from absentee ballots, but strangely (“”strangely””) the proponents of voter ID laws aren’t interested in restricting absentee ballots. (Hint: it is probably not unrelated that absentee ballots are used by more Republican voters.)

So, you and your family need to maybe re-examine the facts that you’re using to support your support of voter ID laws.

I like the intention of the article (and I also saw a good post somewhere where someone listed all the things Trump says he’ll do and why that’s BS because of what the powers of the president actually are, though he will still have more influence than if her lost). But the ‘not everyone that voted for Trump are closet Nazis’ thing kinda rubs me the wrong way.

1) You don’t have to be a Nazi to be racist, anti-LGBT+, etc. It feels a lot like that whole thing with Walky refusing to believe his mom could be a little racist because she isn’t a mustache twirling villain. Racists aren’t all going to be in white robes, or wearing certain symbols, or being obvious. Just because all of Trump’s voters aren’t Nazis doesn’t mean that a lot of them don’t still hold awful views.

2) Even if a lot of the votes for Trump were some sort of protest against the government or Clinton, that still means those were people willing to turn a blind eye to all the crap Trump has said, and that still makes me have a poor opinion of them. That’s still super dangerous way to act and has very real consequences for other people.

Yeah, that part of the article was such infuriating bullshit. Like, no, Trump’s voting bloc isn’t just old white men, rather white people bandied together specifically to vote for an explicitly white supremacist president. Like, the exit polls show a majority of white folks 18-30 voted for Trump, in fact, racist young whites are likely a major factor for why the polls were so far off ahead of the election.

And like, white people can be in denial, can argue that no, they totally cared about distinct issues (that Trump never bothered to talk about or outline any clear policy about) or was just so worried about the economy (that they voted for an out-of-touch fake billionaire who bragged on national TV about not paying people who worked for him and not paying taxes) or any other bullshit to distract from the truth.

Enough white people, scared of not being the most specialest, importantest, gosh darn peacky keeniest voting bloc in America voted for a candidate who could entrench just a little longer period of time where white people can believe that they are the only ones who matter. That black people demanding the right to live or non-white people existing in their suburbs can be destroyed or subdued or erased from the right to vote long enough to keep this con-game going.

And that this game will continue because white people are shit-smearingly terrified of not being the majority again. That if they are just another minority, if they didn’t engage in South African-esque shenanigans to eliminate POCs ability to vote, that they would cease to own everything.

It’s every angry bitter white piece of shit rant about comic books or video games or science fiction or so on.

The idea that if white people aren’t allowed to universally dominate something and have that something treat them like the only people that matter, then that’s just as bad as real oppression, or somehow worse.

So yeah, the idea that the Trump voters back home aren’t racist is some delusional horse shit. When some people go home on Thanksgiving, some of the same people who will ask for a slice of turkey will be ones that voted for a fascist because they were terrified that we might finally be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.

And things won’t change until we stop coddling this white bullshit and calling it out for what it is. Making it more socially shamed and unacceptable to be openly genocidally racist than it is to be transgender or asexual or polyamorous or muslim.

This election should be the wake-up call we need to stop coddling white fee-fees and act like white people’s desire not to be seen as the monsters their policies make them does not trump the reality of their actions.

Every single human being who voted for Trump is a racist. Gleefully and fully. If only for the reason that they could find BS reasons to justify voting for an open fascist whose only consistent promise was to make life more unpleasant for non-white people in this country.

THIS. Say it again for the people in the back. These people do. not. care. About us. They care about themselves and their whiteness, and money, and history has shown time and again they throw anyone under the bus, kill anyone, oppress anyone to get what they care about.

Trump not only won because of them. He won because these same young “liberal” whites and others were spreading the myth that we live in a post racial society, and of course they would never want to hurt us and care, and we believed them and deluded ourselves.

Basically, Obama got elected and people fell asleep. They slept on Trump and they slept on his followers. They looked around at the destruction of their people and closed their eyes and ears, hoping it might work out by itself and ignored it like all the “well meaning/peace and love” white folks told them to. But we have a short term memory. Things could always be worse. They have been worse. Anyone with a rudimentary understand of civil rights in America took Trump seriously. All the rest didnt, because they really don’t remember or *understand* what it was like.

People vote for their perceived selfinterest, and rightly so. Following a populist invoking a rose-tinted past rarely will provide such an outcome in a morally acceptable way, though.

If a significant portion of the electorate feels betrayed, disenfranchised or ignored by the established politicians, they are prone to follow populist rat catchers or characters exuding some strange martial authority.

Yearning for a better, simpler past to return isn’t fruitful. Even as a skilled and educated person you are far from guaranteed a job that will pay your rent. Lacking a good education or living in a neglected portion of your country will continue to undermine your chances, and that’s where a sense of entitlement comes in.

And, believe it or not, even a portion of the population with great numbers can perceive themselves as much as a minority as true minorities, and will perceive their situation as persecuted. Whether those fears are rational or just paranoia is another question.

Fundamentalist religious people come from a culture nurtured by a basic fear. Those living in the USA all have a family history of persecution in Europe, and this has apparently been passed on over the generations.

These people feel they have been altruistic by supporting a state far beyond what the state has given back to them in return. Now they feel they are suffering (and ending up out of employment with little chance to get back is suffering), and see no perspective in the same old that the established politicos offer. And they smart when they hear that economy is blooming.

It beats me how anyone in this position can support a candidate preaching trickle down economy, though. But in all likelihood quite a few of them aren’t aware of this concept.

I agree that people vote for their self interest. But these people not only come from protestant backgrounds, they come from a history of oppressing people of color and having more rights then them. I do think, however, that these people inherently fear POC, LGBTQ, etc people becoming more privileged and prominent.

Its really not that they feel they are the minority, it’s that they know they are the majority, and don’t want to *become* a minority. They know exactly what place they want minorities to have in society. I saw this because for example, there are many, many liberal white people – who have family that are racist. You can be a liberal white person and still feel minorities are beneath you on some level. Racism is just that pervasive and passed down through generations just like and just as long as the puritan traditions were. Like I said, people forget this and act like it’s something new. It’s not. We (minorities) have been there the entire time. Slaves built the white house. Indigenous populations have been mostly wiped out and then pushed to the sidelines. If you understand the history, you understand a lot of what’s happening right now – but people act like history began in America with the civil rights act.

And then there’s the fact that, maybe, even if they were not EXPLICITLY voting for Trump out of Racism, they-
… Well.

As the Patrician put it:
““Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. “

Honestly, Cerberus, that’s an attitude that is entirely justifiable but also one I can’t get behind. Trump got mostly the same people who voted Republican last election plus four states which voted for Obama. Trump’s economic policy is also stolen from the Democrats Pre-Bill Clinton. There’s no earthly reason anyone should support such an odious awful person but the racism and misogyny manfested as people not caring about his attitudes on it versus the exact reason they voted for him. If Democrats have the attitude people who voted for Trump just did so out of racism, they will lose and lose again. It’s the fault of America for voting fo a racist monster but the cause is because people are impoverished and terrified–not just of the brown folk but of literally not being able to survive in their current economic state. I live in Kentucky and the propgaanda machine was 24 talking about Hillary’s desire to destroy the coal industry for environmental reasons which was, in this part of the country, equivalent to saying she would kill your family as that is the ONLY thing people have here.

The DNC needed people out here saying, “We’ve got you covered and we will help you.” It confused me why they didn’t as I worked hard to try and say they would but rarely found any plans for government assistance of depressed areas–which left people stupidly believing Trump when he said he’d fix things.

Actually, I agree with Charles – Oh, I know there are racists out there, but as a white person voting against Trump I didn’t get why people I knew who weren’t particularly discriminatory in any way were voting for Trump. After talking with some of them, they just seem to think that Trump really will shake things up and make America better – or that Hillary is utter evil. I don’t get how they can believe that at all, but the discrimination didn’t seem a factor to them. Which is something that is terrible to me on it’s own, how can they not pay attention to that, but people don’t notice what doesn’t directly affect them. It’s not something they even think about. I’ve heard of that in lots of other contexts too – it’s not a white-specific psychology either, as various minorities ignore or exacerbate each other’s problems just as much – whites just have the convenience of not having many issues that concern them in the first place. So they focus on their area, jobs, and problems instead.

Not trying to say that it is not horrible and wrong that people ignore other’s issues – I’m disgusted – but I also noticed in some other posts that people are taking it as an indicator that most Americans hate LGBTQ+, racists, etc. and got scared of that myself, but I find it comforting that the majority did not even vote for Trump and there are a number of people I know of who just seem blinded by Trump’s bull**** promises and would not actually support people being discriminated against (utterly stupid, I agree, but not actively malicious).

And as for making a difference – people have said this before, but I’d like to reaffirm that even little things can make a difference like the messages on this comic. At least for me, I was always anti-discrimination but stuff like this and Cerberus’s messages made it more personal for me, to the point where after I got the results I started checking the board worried and trying to see if there was anything I could do (thank you to those who posted links to that petition and donation sites!). Making people feel connected to those impacted makes them pay more attention – I think those people I know need something like that.

Effectively, I think people were speaking two different languages. The racism for the Trump victory was the fact Trump is an obvious racist getting voted in but there seems to be the assumption everyone who voted him was doing it BECAUSE of the racism versus the idea they really actually believed he would help with poverty/joblessness/social services in America. Which to a substantial portion of the country (i.e. the left and right coasts), got ignored as too ludicrous to believe.

And of course he’s not going to help with it or even would know how to help if he did–but the fact people kept ignoring Trump as anything but the cretinous hatemongering blowhard is why he won. They were as much blinded by talking points as anyone else. Trump didn’t win on racism, he won on the fact working class Americans didn’t believe in the Democratic Party when they did under Obama. It’s why Obama has a high approval rating and yet people still voted against his party.

To your supporting Trump because they’d think he’d do well by them: that’s exactly WHY it is racism. Because basically what they’re saying is that they don’t give a crap about people being deported, violently attacked, and losing their rights. They just want what they want and will throw anyone under the bus to get it. In fact, my utter disgust is even more directed towards the people who don’t even believe it but follow it anyway -that doesnt make you better, it makes you a selfish and desperate user others.

The thing is, a lot the white people who voted for Trump are not only racist, but they are so racist that they can’t possibly fathom that their plight and their poorness is a feeling shared by others; otherwise they wouldn’t vote for a man who promised to take rights away from everyone else and give it to them. It’s about empathy. It’s about doing your research. You don’t have to completely understand, you just need to empathize, and then you’d realize why this guy is such a bad idea. Not every decision has a moral grey area.

Considering the people you’re talking about, when you look at Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, it is an utter myth that Germans utterly and totally believed Anti-Semitic rhetoric – many were definitely Anti-Semitic like the rest of Europe, but they cared about the idea of money and power and privilege and moving up more. And to the totally brainwashed ones, having a “better life” was just icing on the cake to more substantial punishment they could give to those they blamed for their circumstances. That kind of hatred is rooted in evil, and I’m kind of tired of being asked to empathize with people who didn’t care enough about my people anyway, didn’t before, and won’t now.

Cerberus, I can understand your view here, but I’m not entirely sure painting with such a broad brush is the best way to go about things. Before I get into this I want to be perfectly clear that I supported Hillary. At the end of the day though, I don’t think that every single person who voted for Trump is racist or xenophobic. A great deal of people who voted for him undoubtedly are, and the people who showed up at rallies or gave him his most support certainly are these things, but that doesn’t mean all of the people who voted for him fall under the same category. At the end of the day, the American people want change, and if they want to shake things up then I’m not sure that voting for the democratic party that has clearly turned their back on the working class would be the way to bring about change. I don’t think this makes voting for Trump right, of course, but I know there were people who voted for Trump not for his views or policies, but simply because the felt the need to vote against Hillary.

My guess is that she voted for the bill for reasons of political manoeuvring. She didn’t vote with an eye to getting it passed, but the low risk act of voting for earned her party/constituent brownie points.

Nah, it’s just when she voted for it, she never expected to actually speak face to face with people personally affected by it.

The republican party has gotten a lot of success selling politics as a tribal identification and a game. A system of making sure your “side” wins the points no matter what, whether it be legitimately gaming the system to make it harder for the other “side” to play or openly campaigning against said “sides” right to life.

It’s a system that trades heavily on privilege and the ability of most to assume that the marginalized other is a cipher not a person.

So, yeah, Robin was never once planning on seeing the affect of her vote on real people, on meeting people directly affected by shit, because her whole party’s platform is denying that reality and trying to hide it.

Many, many people in the US need to take a remediary civics course, because they have misconceptions about how the three-branch government is structured. CGP Grey’s videos on YouTube about the debt limit and the electoral college are a good start.

I’m far from the one in the most danger here, but I definitely feel it. I can fake being christian and straight if I have to, but having to pretend after coming out as atheist and polysexual will make my depression worse. I can’t fake being not disabled.

I’m the most scared for all the people that this administration wishes to oppress. Cerberus and her kids. My best friend who’s a witch. My cousin who is getting married to a great man he’s been with for most of my life. My dad’s niece who’s getting cancer treatment. Kids like my two youngest nephews who are being taught homophobia and xenophobia by parents, but were finally getting taught the truth by other sources. The immigrants who worked with my dad. It scares and sickens me so. I think the worst part might be that only a quarter of the people here voted for Trump. Nearly half didn’t vote at all.

*hugs back* Stay safe hun. Hopefully it won’t get too out of control and you, your kids, and everyone else can continue being their true selves. Closets tend to make terrible homes especially when we are forced in them against our will.

I’m so sorry that such a lesson needs to even be taught. I’m sorry that they must spend such a crucial time in their transition living under such a weight. I’m grateful that they have an adult watching over and protecting them though. Have they all had the information changed to the correct names and genders on their documents yet?

You and me both. I doubt I would be able to hide. It’s caused me too much depression over the years. It would go bad for government officials if they instituted a law requiring reeducating and they came after me though. I am a big Democrat in all ways but one.

I’m holding on to the hope that we will not become like Germany because of a mad man and a few monsters, but hope can only go so far. We must fight with our voices and our hearts. When have to protect those that are like us and those that are not because rather the target is on the backs of those who make up 1% of our population or 50% of it, it is still a target that should not exist. We need to speak up and speak out. Let Trump have his presidency but make our voices so loud as to drown out all others and make it impossible to accomplish his bigotry. Don’t be violent. Don’t give them ammo to take us down. Be smart.

And don’t forget the other elected officials for your district and state. Flood their boxes with letters. It’s something I have to start doing myself.

Not from the US? Then find ways to support those of us who are even if it is to be an ear and a shoulder. Be kind. Report trolls and hate speech. Try to be a voice for the rights of those oppressed in your own country. Educate yourself and others. Be a good person.

Monsters, we WILL pull through. Yes, the current leader of our country is every dimension of bigot, but the president is not all powerful. The country will move forward and very little will actually change over the next 4 years. The government will NOT make being homosexual illegal. We might lose some of our hard won freedoms, but I doubt all the recent legislation on our behalf will be overturned. Trump can advocate to repeal the laws until he is blue in the face, but congress will not pass to repeal anything that they think might lose them the support of the people. We’ve had presidents who are against us before. We will suffer the hate speech and the increase of oppression, but we will rise up again strong. We will look defiantly at anyone who would judge us and we will show them that they do not have the power to bring us low. We will gather our supports and allies and we will carry our burdens with pride. We will lend strength to our brothers and sisters and family who falter under the weight. Opposition will only draw us closer and make us stronger as a community. Four years is nothing compared to our history. We will weather the storm, and I have faith that when the clouds clear, there will be a rainbow heralding in a bright day.

Some of the problem is that, aside from marriage equality, most of the protections LGBT people have won over the past 8 years are in the form of executive orders, not laws. Trump can literally overturn them with the stroke of a pen. So even while I’m reassuring my wife that our marriage won’t be invalidated, I’m recognizing that LGBTQ youth – like Becky’s real-world counterparts – will have a much tougher time. That’s before we even start talking about how the most marginalized LGBTQ youth are often also people of color, with all the additional oppression that entails.

Look up Derek Black. The son of the founder of Stormfront, the golden boy of White Nationalism, was converted to multiculturalism by regular Shabbat dinners with an Orthodox Jew on his college campus.

We can reach the younger people, it takes a hell of a lot of work. It’s not an obligation – the first obligation is to take care of yourself, of course. But we are making a difference – they’re only angry because we’ve made so much progress over the last generation.

wooowww I’m proud of Joyce right now, she actually digested the information given to her and did a turnabout right on the spot. She even did right in front of Dorothy, the person who called her out. Joyce is honestly doing great.
I still do think she delivered that callout from Dorothy, even though my comment saying so a couple of days ago got moderated 🙁

I normally just lurk here, but nevertheless I am worried for the lot of you over in the US. Bothers me that I don’t really have any help to offer except for sympathy by appropriate internet contact, and a tip for those of you who might be considering to get the hell out of there:
Taiwan is a really nice place to hide out for a few years. I’m an European living here. People are nice and respectful, it’s really hard to stand out for anything other than being “the foreigner who doesn’t speak any bloody Chinese”, and there’s a remarkable shortage of religious nutjobs. It’s relatively easy for foreigners to find work as an English teacher/tutor, or to get scholarships at the universities. They elected their first female president this year (only took them 6 elections), but that doesn’t seem to be a big deal (because it isn’t!). There’s national health insurance, and it’s affordable. Now, I don’t know where they stand on LGBTQ rights, but I think people simply have better stuff to do than fussing about how you want to live. At least guys holding hands is not an unusual picture around campus. Generally gender roles are way less pronounced here… (Actually the first time I don’t feel like I have to be defensive/acting like a guy for being a woman in science…)
And, apart from all that, it is a really interesting place.
So, here’s an option, maybe it will help someone.

In any case, stay safe. I’d wish you luck, but since you seem to be out of that, I wish you strength. 🙂

But it did pass, and it did get signed, and companies started to pull jobs out of the local economy until another bill to repeal the law was passed and quickly signed. There was a huge Sci-Fi/gamer con (GenCon) that was announcing it was leaving Indy because of the bill placing attendees at risk that I used to vend at (I used to work the table with the guy selling fantasy ID with an old DL camera).

Given what the map looks like for 2018 (8 Republican seats up, only 1 in a blue state, and 25 Democratic (or allied) seats up, 10 of them in red states (not counting Maine, which split)), I would be fucking ecstatic over anything as close as a 50/50 split.

Hell, I’d be fucking ecstatic if I were confident that the 2018 midterm elections were going to be held.

At this point we need to have a little faith that, if the Republicans screw everything up in the next two years, people will vote Democrats in to try to fix things… no matter what colour their state is normally. :/

…it’s hard, it’s very hard to have that faith right now, especially since everything is still so raw, but it is necessary…

Well, the ballot actually spells out the name of the party, but I doubt Joyce’s family read that far – just fill in the oval next to the Eagle symbol. (Indiana parties use an Eagle and Rooster on the ballot instead of the national Elephant and Donkey logos, for some reason)

Whenever you see a politician’s name on the news or somewhere like that, it will have a letter in brackets next to it that tells you the politician’s party affiliation. R is for Republican, D is for Democrat, and I is for Irrelevant… sorry, I mean Independent.

It’s really not. Once they’re in, they get to ride that congressional incumbent pony, and they have very real votes that matter. Third party presidential votes may be totally wasted, but Congress seats aren’t always, and once they’re in, they stay.

Leslie already knew of Becky’s existence and has previously tried to reach out to Joyce in order to help. Joyce brushed her off.
What Leslie still doesn’t know for sure is where exactly Becky is staying, but even if she did the problem isn’t her knowledge but Joyce trusting her enough to seek or accept advice from her.

One slight positive is that now it is public knowledge stated by Joyce that Becky is homeless. There’s a thing as a teacher where you know someone is dealing with something, but the only reason you know that’s the case is because you have a system of spies among the student body and the staff keeping you abreast of shit.

And until the student reaches out, you’re somewhat limited in what you can offer in help as it needs to remain vague so that the student doesn’t feel unsafe or intruded upon.

But when it’s out in the open, you can drown them in resources, in support, in everything you can give.

Leslie has that opening now and she’d be a shitty teacher if she didn’t prioritize that at the end of the class over flirting with Robin.

This could backfire. Yes, Leslie now knows (officially and for the record) that Becky is homeless; but remember that Leslie is not part of a shadow movement like the French Resistance in WWII or the Underground Railroad in the pre-Civil War era. She is a member of the IU faculty and now that Becky is on the radar Leslie may have specific, spelled-out protocol she must follow or risk disciplinary action, disciplinary action that could conceivably go so far as the loss of her job.

Leslie already knew about Becky, and even suspected she was staying with Joyce.

But since she doesn’t know that, she’s not under any obligation to do shit. Since Becky is not a student, there is no conceivable reason there would be an IU policy dictating Leslie do anything upon simply learning Joyce has a homeless friend, much less some draconian punishment for deviating from it.

But she’s hanging with Joyce and (I think) has been sitting in on some classes that she is not registered for. *That*, I’m pretty sure, is a no-no.
And have you forgotten Saint Better-Than-You (Mary), who *WOULD* be more than willing to make a big deal out of it?

Actually, if the professor says it’s OK (so, you’d have to ask them first) and it’s not taking the seat of someone who’s actually registered (so, a class that isn’t full/wait-listed) it’s totally fine for people to sit in on classes. I’ve audited (i.e., not paid for, and not registered for) a few classes that way, and I’ve randomly sat in on other classes (mostly cause my friend was like I NEED YOU COME WITH ME cause she was having issues at the time but still) but again if the class isn’t full nobody cares.

Two things:
1. Well damn. That was quite the armor peircing question right there Joyce. And a good one.
2. Still offering support and sympathy to who ever needs it. And I will be for the next four years. Two if the mid-terms go well. Yesterday I was scared and angry and I spoke from that place. Instead I should have spoken from a place of love and been more reassuring to those of us who are at possible threat. There are a lot of people out there who do care and will stand up. I moaned and complained instead of offering support for those members of the community that will be most affected. I have few friends, but the mean the world to me. I’m the only part of the demographic majority in this small group and I felt that I had failed them. I spent most of the past 20 some hours making sure they were ok. I think I might have actually pissed them off a little with my concern. But in the past sixteen months, half of our little group of friends died. Two were suicide. One was murdered in a hate crime. The fourth died in police custody. People I’d known since I was seven, just gone. So I was scared for my friends, and in overly panicked protective mode. And I feel like I didn’t make it clear that I wanted to give people here support and comfort when I did because of that. I’m sorry about that. Also, sorry about how huge this chunk of text is. I just want anyone reading this who’s hurting to know that they’re not alone. Even if I am just some guy online, I want to let you know that, no matter how hard the next years get, I will stand by you. And other people will stand by you. Please, don’t give up hope. Once again, sorry about the wall of text.

Put it like this: I think we were all due a day of anxiety and fear and shell-shock. I certainly was with my own comment. Nobody could possibly blame you for what you said yesterday; the complaints were pretty much what we all felt anyway.

But for the long haul, you’re right. Now is not the time to lie down. Now is the time to fight.

And I’ve got a little thing that’s been burning in the back of my head for a while now that I think is time to start working on… Stay tuned!

Or at least ethical. Much of what activists in the black and LGBT civil rights movements was illegal at the time (such as sitting in the wrong place on a segregated bus, such as fighting back against police when being gay was a crime). But it was ethical and needed.

I have very few skills and very limited ability with the skills that I do have, but if you want to hit me up and see if there’s anything I can help with feel free too. spam [dot] mee [dot] herere [at] gmail

The world needs that kind of support, now more than ever. You’re doing the right thing, and setting a good example. I kinda did the same thing with my friends last night (not sure where you are, it’s still the evening of the 9th where I am). Lots of virtual hugs across the continent. And through that mutual support, we’ll survive the next four years.

*supportive hug* I think the despair and pain and vomiting so many of us did that night was necessary, just to reset for the fight without being burnt out at the enormity of it all.

And *so many tight hugs* for what you’ve dealt with in your circle. It’s…

I tell my other teachers at work that my goal is to keep all of my trans kids alive and the other teachers laugh and act confused. But I’m specific about it, not only because when push comes to shove those others won’t place their hands into the fire to save the most marginalized, to genuinely do what it takes to fight to prevent a suicide versus just vaguely being “against that sort of thing”.

But because like you, I’ve lost folks along the way. Community members that couldn’t hold on, former mentees that couldn’t hold on, folks that couldn’t manage to keep their snooze alarms going so as to hold on a little longer.

I don’t have a 100% track record on keeping my kids alive despite my best efforts and I refuse to let any more be added to that burnt heap of corpses without one hell of a fight.

And I needed a day to just be utterly broken to refresh that conviction and what I need to do to make sure that my kids are safe and protected to the best of my abilities to do so.

I know, seriously, you can see just how far coming it has been for her to get here, but how important it is nonetheless.

And to think a little more than a week ago, she was cheerfully still believing that homosexuality was a sin one should be “cured” of and likely supporting laws like this without realizing the real lives they affect. The real people affected.

For a real-life equivalent, there are (sadly) several examples, although “only” on state level legislature, particularly in Indiana and North Carolina (still a bit too gloomy to search them out for you, sorry about that). This fictional bill would have been federal, had it passed.

The real-life equivalents being evoked are HB2 in North Carolina and the RFRA (religious freedom restoration act) in Indiana.

Basically laws designed to deliberately and maliciously target any potential of queer people having a space where they are not discriminated against or treated like a cancer that one must excise and let die in the gutter.

But it’s probably only a matter of time before we get a national equivalent, likely masquerading itself as something that is narrowly focused on the critical need to prevent dangerous trans people from peeing, because something something protect the children.

Because of the restrictions of the sliding timeline narrative technique used in this comic, it’s probably not a specific, real life bill.
But I suspect you could find at least (at least) a dozen failed bills that would fit this description

It’s not referring to a specific real bill, but there have been several like that. Basically: “If a company or individual has a legitimate religious objection to serving someone based on sexual orientation or gender identity, they may refuse service.” Its bad because of what Joyce says, worse when you imagine a hospital or cop using that law to ignore the victim of a hate crime.

Robin is impulsive – when someone asks her to do something she tends to go ‘Yeah, sure!’ and just does it – Roz asked her to come, so she came and that is that. Her attention span is also very short – chances are if someone told her this was a bad idea, she couldn’t hear them because she was distracted by something.

And it’s not even the trap Roz intended. Like she mostly just intended Robin to fall in love or lust with Leslie and get tangled in a queer “scandal” that could be used to derail her sister’s campaign. So, this is a trainwreck all of its own making.

Honestly, this exact situation is why “no-platforming” can be useful for all parties, preventing a guest from walking into a shitstorm of angry protest and contempt for their inclusion often at the expense of services the students have paid for.

And not insulting students by having someone openly contemptuous of their humanity rattle off dismissive shit like this say right after they’ve been through a traumatic incident.

I’m gonna guess that in the background, Leslie is starting to regret her decision to let her attraction sway her judgment and to not cancel this meeting when she had the chance to.

Leslie in the AU was specifically attracted to fucked up lesbian relationships. The fact that Robin openly supports stuff that Leslie is majorly against isn’t a turn-off for her- it’s, potentially, a turn-on.

Willis spoke a bit about it, and while I don’t want to speak for him and I can’t remember where to find it, he did explain that it was to do with her coming from a heavily Christian- possibly fundamentalist?- family, and how it ties in to his own experiences.

Now, all of this could be different in this universe. I suspect not, but it’s a nurture issue rather than a nature one- Leslie’s background and motives may be different enough that we can’t assume. But it is something to bear in mind.

I was actually noticing earlier that Leslie’s cleavage seems to be retreating. Whether that’s just gravity reasserting itself on the Ghost-bust-ers after she pulled them up through the neckline of her sweater vest, or if it’s symbolic of Robin’s decreasing appeal to her, I’m not sure.

Joyce saying that her family votes for the letter reminded me of a polysci teacher that my fundie raised nephew had, and the lesson he taught about morality and politics.
Since my nephew grew up in a “everbuddy nose the thet uther party has no morals, filled with sinnas, they don’t think like we think” church , he thought that to believe in the morals he was raised with, he had to be Republican. His professor went through the hotbed issues and had a show of hands for agreement. 60% of the class was prolife, 50% believed in gay marriage , and 89% was for the environment. The demographics 98% Democrat, 1% Republican, 1% Libertarian.

Most politicians are seriously unnerved when the ‘others’ that they casually victimised for the sake of a few percentage points turn out to be real people. It is to Robin’s credit that she seems genuinely embarrassed by this revelation. Quite a few politicians would have said something like: “When you grow up, you’ll realise that she had it coming” or something similarly dehumanising.

Yeah, that Panel 7 Robin face is the moment she realizes that the other she so casually dismisses out of political tribalism exists, has lives, has friends, has real impact.

Bigots hate having to face the reality of their policies, the consequences their actions have on the lives of others. Its part of the reason that bigots really hate my existence and willingness to talk about fucked up things that have happened to me.

Because it confronts them with the personal cost of their political bigotry and does not allow them the comforting delusion that they’re a “good person” and all that political posturing is just that, a means for one’s “side” to win. And that’s not something that is comfortable to think about.

And it’s something that needs to be more public, because we’ve got one “side” that is treating politics like a World Series and another that is just a loose coalition of folks getting their heads kicked in because of the other “side” and just wanting to making the hurting cease for a hot second.

I was a huge bigot in high school and the big thing which shook me horribly out of it in the Robin-esque way I see here was when I met my bosses at my first job–a lesbian couple. I held my tongue, thankfully, and a week after knowing them realized what a colossal shitheel I was. It and a lot of soul searching caused me to re-evaluate my life in a Joyce-esque way to become what I perceive to be a better Christian.

I’m sure it’s been said before, but I just want to state you are a goddamn gem of a human being and the world is a better place for your existence, efforts, and the care you feel towards your students.

What makes this worse is her reaction.
If she truly believed in that sorta bill, she’d never look like that. Which means she voted for a bill that went against her own beliefs, and I’m guessing it wasn’t really worth it.

Robin pretty much explained yesterday that her only priority in Congress is to continue to be in her position of privilege and power. She’ll do whatever it takes and accept whatever slights and outrages to her dignity and conscience that maintaining her position (or even advancing) requires.

She’s basically an amoral careerist. Or, at least she tells herself she is. One of the interesting things about her DoA character arc is that Willis is addressing whether she really can manage to maintain that position in the face of real people.

Yeah, it’s the fascinating way that characters’ traits shift when placed in the real world. Robin being a desperate amoral centrist in the Walkyverse was wackiness, but here, those people have a real cost to how the world works and we’re seeing it in just how much more vile Robin is as a human being in this universe.

But that doesn’t matter in this case. It’s not like this was a secret provision coded in hidden language. It was a bill specifically targeting the civil rights of gay people. That’s why her constituents pushed for it so loudly. No way to avoid knowing what it was about. And she obviously knows which one Joyce is referring to.

Joyce is ALL the awesome here. The exact right question at the exact right time, and another layer of lies from her childhood is undone.

All of you who argued against me about Dorothy the other day – you were right and I’m very happy for that. Dorothy’s comeback was the nudge in the right direction Joyce needed rather than the red flag I feared it was.

I confess, I think DOA Robin is a really great embodiment of the bad in the setting. It’d be nice to have her redeemed but I feel the same way about Mary. As much as I love Shortpacked! Robin, Robin the politician represents all the actual power and hurdles our heroes will have to face and deal with.

Honestly I think people are sometimes so down with honesty as a virtue it kind of deafens some to the fact that sometimes the ‘truth’ the person is expressing is still awful and worthy of judgement.

Like people are considered ‘brave’ for expressing their honest-to-god bigoted opinions.

(This is without getting into the fact sometimes lying is necessary to be a good person- like if someone’s lives are on the line to do so. That’s the classic scenario brought up in high/secondary school debates in my experience)

Basically honesty shouldn’t be considered a black or white issue on the morality scale: Sometimes honesty is good, sometimes it’s not and it all also sometimes hinges on the kind of person you are to begin with.

That being said maybe Robin will have to face up to the truth herself thanks to /Joyce’s/ honesty. Girl did good- lulled Robin in as a potential ‘ally’ due to personal relationships (her parents) and then expressed her disappointment and confusion on how she could support such a thing given how it affects someone /else/ important to her. Her friend.

“Honesty” is almost always good- “openness” is far less so. If your opinions are harmful and you keep them to yourself, that’s not being dishonest- that’s not being open about them.
I feel that that’s what we should applaud in people- those who are honest and genuine, but who understand how much openness is good- and when it can be harmful.

Or maybe I’m rambling and just talking shite! I’m tired enough to not even be sure.

There’s also the problem that people assume that someone saying something they think is unpopular must be telling the truth, when they may just be pandering to a specific crowd. I suspect a lot of Robin’s constituents praise her for her courage and honesty in telling it like it is and not caving to political correctness, when she’s really just pandering for their votes. She’s not honest, she’s lying, probably to herself as well.

And when it comes to politicians, I’d still rather have the one who secretly hates me, but needs my vote so lies about it and at least minimizes the harm so he can keep getting it, over the one who honestly and openly hates me. He’s got no practical reason to hold back.

In this country, bullies, racists, and bigots have always been celebrated and rewarded. We say that there was no way Trump would have gotten elected, but the reality is that Americans LOVE rich white people. Always have, always will. There’s a reason Keeping Up With the Khardashians, the Apprentice, all these “reality” shows that center around mostly rich white people have lasted for so long.

Non-wealthy people vote against their own interest not just because of the spitefulness of their -sisms, but because of the false assumptions of their -isms. In their heads, they are Donald Trump because they secretly want to be him. They think of themselves and vote like they’re rich whtie billionaires because they desire to be that. So instead of thinking “I need Social Security now” they instead think “When I become a millionaire I won’t want to pay taxes for social security” and end up screwing themselves over.

More to that point, when any old regular person talks about any -isms or other problems, no one wants to listen. When Donald Trump, or some other massively wealthy person with *star power* talks, people listen to what he has to say even though it makes no sense. Note that I said star power- nobody follows the advice of their doctors, and yet Jenny McCarthy has a stance on vaccines. She’s not even a physician’s assistant or nurse. And by the way, the person that would know the most about vaccinations and its immunological mechanisms would be an immunologist/virologist/microbiologist – but of course no one knows that or cares.

People don’t want to listen to straight up facts. They follow the billionaire start up business person because his is the only profession where you don’t have go to school for 8 years, work for 15, and struggle with a job search to get the salary he’s making. You could “get lucky” or “be discovered” and BOOM – instant millionaire. In other words, the question for these people is “how can I take the most from people while giving the least?” But little do they know this man is white, born wealthy and prominent family and living in America, and that is all you need to become president in this country. Even before Trump, all the way back to the founding fathers.

That’s what makes my stomach hurt. I get so angry when I think about it. HRC , as flawed as people might think she is, worked her ass off to get to where she wanted to go. And Trump. This man has literally gotten everything he’s always wanted, and the American people were happy to hand it to him and lick his boots while they were at it.

And it gets to what Heather points out, that we value “honesty” as brave so long as it reinforces the convenient status quo, the casual bigotries against the hated other.

And we do so as a political tactic as a means of making the casual utterances of utter hate seems rebellious and dangerous even though we are so accepting a society of bigotry that we elected a man who ran on nothing but that but demanded pure perfection from the woman running against him just to make up for her identity.

And that “honesty” does not extend to the marginalized. When a marginalized group member comes out as an identity, they face open hostility and an urge to destroy by the same society that will pretend the groups doing so are “brave” for their “honesty”.

And woe be any marginalized person who speaks eloquently and passionately on the suffering of their people. Or expressing any level of discontent at the dominant groups in society. We as a society do not value that honesty and brutally punish it.

Because we don’t want honesty, we want the ability to be bigots while still believing that we can still pretend to be good people.

The problem with this statement is Trump has been using the talking points of Democrats from the 80s. Not the xenophobia, immigration, or more but opposing American corporations removing jobs. Why he had them and not the Democrats is a pertinent question. The Southern strategy got the Republicans the racist vote. The Midwest Strategy for Trump got Republicans the states which voted for Obama.

The lack of jobs is a pertinent issues, but one of my points is that Trump and many before him have always had that implication of “foreigners”, “Mexicans” , etc. “Taking” jobs from Americans. That’s part of why white Americans stand behind him because it’s not so much that he’ll create jobs, he’ll take them from the very people they believe “stole” the jobs from them. He’s not saying that CEOs, the upper middle class and the like will make less money or pay more taxes to benefit the jobless- that’s not on his agenda at all, being that he is a part of that group. The myth that minority groups steal jobs is one that keeps the larger populace from realizing that the rich, white, wealthy elite are the ones fucking us over, no other minority poor people. And I would say that part of President Obama’s appeal was that he *wasnt* just another rich, white, my dad was also a congressman/president member of the elite, so perhaps that’s why he appealed to those groups. They thought he would do something for them.

What I’m saying is it’s a reductionist attitude to try and completely distill everything Trump says into racism. This isn’t to say Trump isn’t an enormous racist or there wasn’t a powerful sentiment of such attitudes behind him. However, four major states which voted for Obama went for Trump and it wasn’t because of white supremacy. It was a serious issue of letting the Democratic base (working class Americans) feel their interests were not being represented. Do I think Trump will do anything for them? No. I do think the DNC lost the election on economic grounds rather than just pandering to prejudice–however tempting a narrative that is to those who are justly horrified. I do think any chance of getting Trump out of office in four years will depend on remembering this.

I absolutely think it had to do with white supremacy. It’s not reductionist, it’s the truth. I concede that it’s a part of the truth – poverty hurts whites the way it would anyone else – but it’s like 80% the truth nonetheless. Seriously, read the history – actual history, not the bland PC high school history textbook version of it. When you’re a poor white person who has no material wealth and is living in shitty neighborhood with no job prospects, you don’t actually have nothing because you have your whiteness. When there was slavery, at least you weren’t a slave. After it was abolished, at least most people you knew weren’t sharecroppers, and at least you could vote if you were a man. Then the Civil Rights act passed, and there was an increase in resentment of POC. Think about all the Jim Crow and beyond era laws. White people didn’t enact them because they were being mean or evil – that’s not the whole truth either –

They did it because they couldn’t stand the idea of minorities being their social and *economic* equals. People’s businesses were burned, vandalized, and destroyed. They followed those children, harassing and threatening to kill them for daring to want to go to just as good as their schools. Its not only about having money, it’s about being the *only* group that’s allowed access to this money, and accumulating all resources to the detriment of everyone else. That’s what privilege means for them, that’s an effect of colonialism, etc.

If what you say about working class whites feeling neglected is true, and I think it is true that they and all people who think they are working class but are poor in reality are neglected because of heavy resistance in recent years to expanding social policy, it makes absolutely no sense for them to vote in a man who owns several failed businesses and hasn’t paid his proper taxes for decades. By all accounts, they would realize that man is not and never has been in it for them, and his policies will make them suffer. But he didn’t just promise them stolen and imaginary jobs, he promised to make America white again- he promised to punish the people these white folks have blamed for their poverty and lack of mobility, since the day the a free POC stepped onto American soil and made it rain. It’s a need to feel like someone has to lose in order for you to win. So you don’t vote for the person who will enact policies that will help you, you vote for the person who will toss your sons and daughters into a war, start a recession and render you jobless, or someone like Trump.

The poor went to Clinton in a landslide. It was the middle class and rich who voted for Trump and they did it in a recovery economy that they are happily employed in.

I know we want to think well of half our country and believe that they did not just openly vote for an incompetent fascist because they hated the fact that non-white people and queer folks exist so much that they didn’t care about anything else.

But the reality is, yes, half our country is just that damn racist.

Oh, they’re good at being civil to our faces, especially if we’re white like them and acting like its a charming quirk or it has some economic factor at play, but it doesn’t.

The Trump voters do not care that a Trump election is going to tank the economy so long as it hurts brown people more. So long as they can keep pretending that this country only belongs to them. That it is theirs and no one else’s. And if they can’t have that, they’ll gladly tear this country apart from the inside to get that sense of universal value back.

It’s not about the economy. It’s not about jobs. It’s not about money.

It’s a 150 year legacy of slavery and a violent revulsion among the population that that which used to be legal property can be full people, can value in society, can be the market that the ads chase, can be the people depicting in movies and television. That their issues might actually matter and need addressing.

And we don’t want to believe that, but it’s the lesson. Republicans were racist enough to vote for an open fascist, to make him their emblem and to carry him to the presidency. And they did it on the back of extensive disenfranchisement of non-white voters. To an even larger extent than ever before.

Because in their heads, this can never be our country. We can never be allowed purchase to their white supremacist fantasy. We can hide in the shadows and die or be happy little minstrels for their morality plays, but we need to stop living in denial that a significant part of this country wants “the other” dead and gone and too terrorized to speak.

Exactly. They don’t want us to access the Dream, whatever that means. They will and have done anything to keep people from being equal to them. If they really cared about economic well being they would not have voted for Trump. Period. They want to punish POC for having rights they always had, and never have to worry about vanishing. They really don’t care about us. They don’t. And one thing that’s not helping is all the people in my life also who are telling me this not all white people bullshit. No. Most of the white people that voted voted for Trump.

That color blind, all everyone is equal crap is what caused the liberal people who “care” to not take him seriously in the first place. And even with voter suppression laws, millions and millions of people fell asleep on election day too.

I guess what I’m saying is this: if we dont care about ourseleves, who the fuck will? Why are we still waiting for our metaphorical Abe Lincoln instead of doing the work ourselves? Not pointing these questions at you Cerberus, because you do the damned thing every day and I respect you for that.

Like, there are people on my feed going: oh, voting doesn’t work. Yes it does – it works because one thing about the Right is that their people are loyal as fuck. They will go out, rain or shine, and vote for their representatives. In EVERY election – not just the presidential one. This is how the House and the Senate and all the other small offices end up red all the time. They know they can’t afford to stay home or not register. They know they cant afford to break up and flip flop and vote third party or write godamned motherfucking harambe the gorilla because of some existential what are we doing what is this meaning bullshit. This election was not the time to do that- and they knew this, because they knew their livelihoods were at stake, even though they were completely wrong for it.

Like I’d love to talk about fairness of election and all that shit, but I’d also love to talk about it when my friends might get deported and people are harassing and killing the people I care about and I’m not going be overtaxed and broke for the next 4-8 years. Fucking wake up people – this is it! This your life. It’s happening right now – do you care? So what are you going to DO about it? Let’s talk about that instead of still being mad about Bernie or the Green Party how many f*cking months later.

I’d be careful with using exit polling to determine the socioeconomic status of voters. Americans, at least (maybe just people? not actually sure off the top of my head) tend to identify higher than they are.

White privilege is about not being shot by police as well as a minority of its group concentrating all of the wealth in their hands, it doesn’t actually prevent you from dying in destitution, unable to pay your hospital bills or mortgage. White Rich AmericaTM ground up the poor working class of all races in America.

I suggest you take a walk through rural Kentucky and West Virginia sometime to see the displaced families, drug addiction, and hopelessness. Social justice must include saving the poor from their conditions whether they live in urban segregated communities or dying industry towns. Because people like Trump are exploiting the fact they’re desperate and dying–and I mean dying because they can’t afford medical aid because the Republicans have blocked affordable health care in many places.

My closest friend has a father suffering dementia, a mother with persistent medical conditions, and lives in massive debt due to being a retail clerk trying to care for both–and while he’s smart enough to know Trump was a lie, their neighbors believed they would get poverty relief.

I’ve lived in poverty. I’ve been the last line keeping someone from starving to death on the street and the number of folks I know that have spent a stint homeless is staggering.

I know those rural communities too and they’re suffering, no lie.

But it’s still racism not economic populism, not economic desperation. Cause the poor whites voted for Hillary. It’s the folks making over 70,000 who voted for Trump, the middle class went hard for him and its because they want anyone not white to die in poverty rather than dare exist in their deliberately segregated gated communities.

And no one, simply no one really believed the ignorant tax-dodging guy who doesn’t pay his workers actually gives a fuck about workers compared to the person that has actually run poverty relief programs.

But it’s a convenient excuse when you want to avoid blame for deliberately destroying a semi-functional democracy out of fear that black people and women might continue to get their filthy cooties on it and they wouldn’t matter more than the black people.

That those folks living in bad situations in white neighborhoods aren’t inherently better than all black people simply by virtue of their race.

That’s what folks couldn’t stand. And they voted that and they were open and blatant about what they were voting for and why.

Like, to look at an election where the candidate who won ran his entire campaign on nothing but the promise to hurt “the other”, who banged hard on the drum that at least “the other” will be suffering more than you, who sold nothing but the murder and death of “the other” and pretend that it wasn’t about bigotry is to be blind to what this election was.

This was about white people turning to fascism because the thought of women and blacks having an equal seat at the table was too much for them.

And it was the middle class and rich whites who turned more than the poor. Because the poor know what it’s like to starve yourself endlessly so your child may live.

I’m not disputing your understanding of the situation. Still, I can’t help but note, again, that 4 states which voted for Obama are ones which voted for Trump. That two to one among white women without a college education voted for Trump. That she lost repeatedly in counties which are composed of the American working class. That the constant commercials against Hillary were very much about her economic background. NAFTA and free trade agreements and shutting down coal as well as other industries. That it was an amazingly close vote in many of the places Trump one and if she had a better economic policy, it might have been different. The thing is, you can’t change bigots without their consent but I note that I think it was a wellspring also of desperation for economic relief too. But maybe I’m wrong. I could be.

Because in the 80s, manufacturing jobs were a thing that actually existed in developed countries. In 2016 they’re not. The real money is elsewhere. There is no way to bring those jobs back short of massive protectionism that hasn’t been seen since those manufacturing jobs first /arose/; even then, that probably wouldn’t do it, we might need simply astronomical protectionist measures. And in America’s case in particular, it would likely just mean buying substandard clothes at super-high prices, because we’re already used to substandard clothing.

Heck, we’d also have to introduce anti-robotic assembly laws. It’s… it’s just not happening. Manufacturing jobs are just not going to be returning to blue collar americans. And that’s the big one that they claim to be concerned for economically. Moving to service or knowledge industries is just where it is.

Also, considering this is what the GOP has fought against, he’d need to introduce those protectionist measures (which would likely include punitive taxes on companies leaving) over the GOP’s collective dead body.

I’m aware those jobs can’t come back, Lailah. The fact is, though, Trump said they could and the fact people are solely saying, “It’s because of racism” versus that promise is a major reason the momentum never slowed. There was something of a DNC echo chamber where everyone said, “Anyone who votes for Trump is a stupid racist motivated by hate and nothing more.” When you have that attitude, to the point of tuning out anyone who is taking promises of poverty relief seriously, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. I think part of this may be regional because I LIVE in the rural South and the commercials were a nonstop barrage of anti-Hillary adds…focusing not on Muslims or Brown People or the Wall or gays but the fact Hillary was making a War on Coal. There were other adds talking about the War on Steel. If you’ve never lived in Kentucky, you don’t really understand those are ways of life. Trump is a lie but he said he’d restore them both–and everyone in the Democratic parties I worked with just ignored that because they couldn’t bring themselves to offer any alternative.

To clarify myself, Trump is a vampire who puts a sign outside his door which said, “Free Hugs.” People came in for the Free Hugs. Hillary did not have a sign which said Free Hugs and just assumed people would see the vampire. Then many wondered why people were Pro-Vampires when they were always Free Hugs–even if Free Hugs were never available. People wanted to believe and that’s the greatest tool any con man can make use of.

But the promise is a lie. From us, I mean. Manufacturing Jobs will not come back. People have to leave. Urbanization can only be temporarily halted by massive harm – it can’t be reversed. There’s a hard truth here. Like, in theory, actual aid can be given to help this shift, but putting aside that the republicans would block it, there isn’t political will for it. It’s hard enough keeping what little state help we have. They just voted against stuff that would at least provide relief, but no cure (b/c there is no cure americans would accept.)

That said, there isn’t much of an alternative that the USA will ever let itself offer besides potentially at least some welfare.

The simple facts of the matter are, all we can /plausibly/ do is offer them the opportunity to educate themselves. And the problem with that is, the actual infrastructure to do so is expensive – not impossibly so, but enough so that congress wouldn’t do it. And it would involve uprooting people – y’all who are living on plants and mines, in particular. Like, I’m from a town that was living on something like that (Not manufacturing jobs, but military bases, and servicing them. Also tourism, but the town would have died without the bases, and suffered greatly with the loss of one). I understand what having family roots in that kinda place is like. But like… those jobs aren’t coming back. Cities are what they are for a reason – it’s really useful to have a ton of people crammed together. Getting an education or a different, particular skilled trade is really your only collective chance, and it probably has to come with a move.

A New Deal could at least slow the pain, but… it’s not happening. Assuming the democrats would be fine wtih it, the republicans wouldn’t. Since they were going to have 50 votes in the senate no matter how many miracles were pulled out of a pocket, it wouldn’t happen.

I’ll def. grant that Hilary doesn’t address /that/, but how could she? How many people want to hear “Your hometown is useless now. Most of you, if not all of you, need to get. There is no opportunity there.”

I grok you, I do. Coal is a dead industry. It destroys the environment, it’s useless compared to other sources of power, and it’s not something which anyone really wants internationally or locally. Hillary is forward thinking to say we need phase it out but doing that when just this year, my area lost FIFTY THOUSAND jobs was going to go over like a lead balloon — especially in an area which is already drying up.

I’m not even talking about coal as poison. It’s still going to be mined. It’ll be done by fewer people, because machinery improved. Jobs are gone, and they’re not coming back. Y’all have to leave, in the long term. Y’all gotta go where there are jobs. Y’all gotta get new jobs, many of which require at least training, and possibly education.

Programs can be made to help wtih that. Some /were/, if not enough. I’m not even talking about the intentional removal of jobs here as a state action.

“Y’see, Blondie, the sucky fact is that, for people like me to stay on the top, folks like your friend get thrown under the bus because she doesn’t matter to enough people with big money. Shitty deal, I know but that’s how the real world works!”

Hmm. I know that IW!Robin can actually use her brain when she wants to, so I really hope this incarnation can do so too. She spent too long in this storyline as it is in airhead mode, I’m looking forward to her having something remotely resembling a coherent discourse, even if it’s something I don’t agree with.

I love Joyce so much right now. I remember reading Huckleberry Finn in school and our English teacher describing his internal conflict over whether to help Jim escape to freedom as “a sound heart versus a malformed conscience.” I think that describes Joyce too, and it’s great watching her fundamental goodness overcoming the messed-up system of morality in which she was raised.

Did any of you by chance see the orange one’s victory speech? Considering his m. o. so far, it was very… restrained. Reasonable, even. He displayed nothing but the utmost respect for Hillary, which already pissed off some of his voters.

Hell, he almost forgot to mention Pence among the people he thanked. I will have to check again, but I seem to remember that their handshake was a bit awkward, maybe indicating that they aren’t really that close – but that may have been wishful thinking on my part.

Now, I know a single speech means jack, but I still have this probably irrational an naive hope that Trump won’t be as bad as we were led to believe in the past months.

I remember reading an article on cracked a while back that described a very convincing conspiracy theory that Trump was really secretly working for the democrats.

Well, the main theory at the start was, he only wanted publicity and was surprised he got this far, making blunders and horrible statements on purpose to finally get sorted out…yet got stronger. Dropping out himself was never an option, that would just show him as weak, and worse, show his true intentions.

I’d like to think he was standing in front of a huge crowd of angry, racist shitheads, already planning, who to lynch first, and he thought: “Well crap, if I now say I don’t accept this, they’ll reach me in about 4 seconds. Heck, Pence would probably hold me in place.

I agree – that’s what I was saying to someone the other day. Businessmen are not usually good presidents (or Congressmen, or Senators..) because when you get to a high enough point, you literally just hire people to manage the company for you, and in the meantime don’t do very much at all. I’ve worked in several offices. Many of these people are “busy” and therefore never around and everyone else just has to manage their workflow for them. They would be terrible presidents because frankly they are just not used to doing day in day out work – and a presidency is a TON of work. You are right, in that he will just Leave it to Pence – and that scares the shit out of me, because Pence is arguably worse than he is. And that’s saying something.

See, this is a difference.
Trump would be like “I never voted for that”
“But heres a record of you”
“I never voted for that”
“Heres video of you..”
“I never voted for that. You lie!”
“You still have the pen in your hand and the ink is wet…”
“Stupid media always out to get me!”
etc

It didn’t pass. And I knew it wouldn’t pass. I was against it in the discussions, and from what I could see there, there was no chance it would pass. However, the people behind the bill proposed a trade, in exchange for my vote, they’d be voting for something I was campaigning for, that our county desperately needs. So I thought: My vote wouldn’t be nearly enough to turn the bill, I could just do this and be one step closer to push my thing through. That’s politics as well.

Not that that is the probable case here or ethically right or anything…but it is one excuse one could make, and might actually sway some doubters.

Not to worry, I am assured that only a small fraction of the people who voted for Trump actually want those horrible things done. Most of them are just indifferent and willing to go “yeah, whatever” in exchange for a vague handwave about getting a better job Real Soon Now.

To be honest, in retrospect, Trump won because he stole the 80s Democrat economic policies. The Clintons were the ones who moved away from it with their Centrist economic position (Circa 94) and the Republicans didn’t pick it up so Trump doing it gave him the blue-collar support to win the Rust Belt. The rest was history.

The scary thing isn’t that Trump has an army of racist sexist jerkasses behind him. The scary thing was Trump had the POOR of the United States and higher among minorities than Romney.

….No, that’s not the scary thing. You don’t fucking get it, dude. A Trump that came to power without empowering racism isn’t scary. It’s… bad, since AGW would still be a thing, but it’s not /scary/. I’m not much more worried about state violence than I was before the election (Me, in particular, because of geography. Others have cause to be).

The scary thing is the jackasses who now feel like they can commit hate crimes with impunity.

I mean this notwithstanding that economic policy shifted because economic realities were shifting. Manufacturing jobs were on the decline, not because of policy, but because of technology. Hell, American manufacturing is higher than ever. The thing is, it takes fewer people to do it. 80s economic policy ain’t got shit to do with that.

Because I’m pretty sure we were past the point where anything that we were realistically gonna do about it could have stopped it. But now that the party that’s started the last few years by having to be browbeaten into continuing to have money that’s worth more than toilet paper is in charge of all three branches of the Federal government, the global economic collapse that’s coming will radically cut emissions!

Yeah, I’m deeply worried about that and hope the rule of law makes an example of them. This isn’t too much to hope for because of the ending of Henry the Fourth part II feels applicable. Falstaff and other supporters think they’ll be protected but the man they think is their friend doesn’t.

Seems kind of strange to me too, as a Canadian…and we live next door to the US. But that kind of crap can happen here too if we aren’t careful. It’s not some rosy gay utopia in Canada, but it’s certainly better than some parts of the US.

Best part? It’s still totally acceptable to discriminate and evict queer folks for being queer in the “protected states” so long as you wrap it in a thin newspaper of bullshit first because the statutes that do exist to protect us are so woefully underenforced that most companies treat them more as suggestions than as actual law. Which is why I got discriminated out of a job in a “protected state” and why so many of my friends have faced evictions for being queer, again, despite living in a “protected state”.

I felt really bad for Leslie ever since Willis made this version of Robin a conservative Republican, but my heart melted just a little at the sight that Robin is still capable of shame. She has too much shame to defend what she did, even though there are scripts to follow for questions just like this.

If Leslie still has a wide-on for for doomed sci-fi romances, she’s probably fantasizing about deathbed Padme whispering, “There’s still good in him. I can feel it.”

Also, in light of the recent death of Jack Chick, I must point out how much this scene looks like a classic Chick Tract confrontation with the ideologies switched. All that’s missing are the footnotes.

If you don’t want to stand for anything, get a job as a telemarketer, or cashier, or mechanic, or pretty much anything that ISN’T politics. Politics is (or, rather should be) about standing for something.

Wait, he just died recently?!?!?! How old was he, 100? those disgusting things have been around forever, I assumed he had died years, if not decades, ago. Me and my friends used to collect these. We would make a point of “finding” them in front of the fundies we suspected had planted them, then laugh at, heckle and make fun of them. The tracts, not the fundies, although we did our share of that too.

He died this year, though I can’t tell you the exact date. But wikipedia has got us covered – October 23rd. And now I have jack chick in my search history. Truly, Dick, you are one of the top 100 evils in the world.

Actually, I suppose this is appropriate as a comment all on it’s own, too:
“Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. ”
Havelock Vetinari, from Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!

I think my favourite part of that book is when the dragon tells the clerk he’s going to go get ready to face the heroes (paraphrased, because I’m AFB):
“There’ll be no heroes.”
“No heroes?”
“None.”
“But… I’m conquering your city. I’m stealing your gold. I’m eating your people.”
“Nevertheless. Look into my mind, if you don’t believe me.”
The dragon does, and recoils horrified.
“Why that look? It’s nothing you haven’t done to us.”
“Yes, but we never pretended it was for your own good!”

As someone from Indiana, this hits painfully close to home. And now the man who signed that despicable thing into law is the president of the senate in a rebublican dominated congress soon to have a republican majority in the SCOTUS…

I usually have some snark to add, but I just wanted to thank you for this comic.

I’m really, really low today. I got into it over email with a relative who didn’t understand why the LGBT community was terrified of Trump, mustered up my courage, and told him 1) I’m bi 2) this is why he terrifies me. So far I’ve received utter silence in response. I HOPE he’s making a face just like Robin’s right now.

There’s a lot of people in this country who just…don’t get that tangibly bad things can happen to LGBT people as a result of Trump and the GOP getting so much power. They’re pro-LGBT (or at least indifferent) in the abstract, but not pro-LGBT enough to let it sway their vote or even make them own up to their candidates’ homophobia. When you present them with the real-life consequences of, say, Mike Pence’s beliefs, they freeze up. Or say “sure, that might happen, but what about my factory job? Who you have sex with just isn’t as important as [x].”

Hopefully, your relative is just trying to find the words to talk to you, especially if they voted for Trump.

Best of luck to you – there’s plenty of of politicians that aren’t just indifferent but actively hostile to the LGBT community that completely change their tune when it’s someone they know or are related to that would start getting the short end of the stick.

To my happiness and relief, he said he appreciates me confiding in him and loves me no matter what. He just has kids and couldn’t respond to my message very quickly, and wants to talk this stuff out over a beer instead of by email.